Fans pick 52 books like Medical Botany

Edited by Matilda van den Bosch and William Bird, Nature and Public Health. Each chapter was written by several top experts in the field. There were more than a hundred different experts chosen to write sections of this fine book, selected from all around the world of health, botany, horticulture, urban forestry, urban affairs, and the environment. Nature (or the lack of it) is closely aligned with human health, and this wonderful book explores the subject like no other.

Airborne and Allergenic Pollen of North America was the most important book I read (out of hundreds) when I was doing my original research for my own book. The material is extensive, accurate, scientific, and yet it is quite readable. Unlike so many other books, papers, or articles on pollen and allergy, this book takes into consideration all of the plants grown in North America, not just the trees. A classic, and yet, still the very best.

I own hundreds of books on plants and trees. The two finest books written on American trees were both written by Donald Culross Peattie. His book on Western trees is amazing. When he looks at and writes about a particular tree, he mentions everything about it. What it looks like, where it grows, how big it gets, what it is used for, what animals, birds, insects use this tree. He also mentions in detail how it flowers, sets seeds, grows….he misses next to nothing. Totally recommended! 

A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America by author and naturalist Donald Culross Peattie is probably the very best book on trees that I have ever read. I used this book (and also his book on Western trees) as a marvelous resource when I was working on my books. 

I learned many a new thing from this book, things I could not find in books written by botanists or horticulturists. This in large part is because Peattie was first and foremost, a naturalist. He tells the reader things that others didn’t bother to mention (for example, that with Honeylocust trees, each branch is of only one sex). The author also has a wonderful way of writing that makes the text come alive…always interesting.  As a naturalist, Peattie looks at the whole picture; one of the few writers about trees who was also a dedicated ecologist. A… show more.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Michael Hickey at one of the RHS shows in London, at which I was exhibiting some of my botanical art; a thoroughly nice man, who sadly died soon after. I also met the personable and talented Coral Guest, the creator of the most exquisite botanical paintings, at the same show!

This is an excellent introduction to plant families for the beginner in botanical painting, focusing on 25 core plant families. It leaves out some of the technical botanical detail which would probably be included on an undergraduate botany course, but which would be confusing for the botanical painter who simply wanted to illustrate. It is clearly laid out, written, and illustrated; a must for plant artists, would-be botanists, and even medical herbalists - everywhere!

Matthew Hall’s book offers a good formulation of the problem—Western philosophy has treated plants as things, not as living beings—and a nice overview of alternative (non-Western and, above all, Indigenous) approaches to plants that do not fall into the same trap. I have on many occasions vehemently disagreed with Hall’s recommendations that we should treat plants as persons, not least because of the problematic (and, ironically, very Western) heritage of personhood. But it is a wonderful entry point into the topic of plants and philosophy.

I learned about botanical nomenclature as a 19-year-old, and it opened a world to me, a place where plants told me something about their origins and their function. This book gives me the background to the long history of naming.

Those who gathered plants, who learned their uses and needed to be accurate, also required a system that would allow them to write about their knowledge in a way that allowed others to use it and share it. From Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus in 4th century BE Athens to Islamic scholars to the 18th-century medical professor Carl Linnaeus, Anna Pavord immerses us in the search for meaning and sense in the world of plants.

It isn’t, not at all. It’s history at its best, populated by apothecaries, artists, botanists and scholars. And the illustrations are sublime.

What’s distinctive about this gorgeous poetry anthology is not only that each poem has a specific tree or flower as its subject but that they are grouped according to plant family.

The editor Sarah Maguire was a gardener as well as a poet and translator. In what was clearly a labour of love she brought together poems from all over the world, spanning eight centuries of writing. Her fascinating introduction considers many aspects of nature poetry, including gender and colonialism.

As a gardener and poet I have loved finding poems by Medbh McGuckian, Emily Dickinson and D.H. Lawrence grouped together in the Gentian family or poems by Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, Lorna Goodison, Robert Herrick, Marianne Moore, and Richard Wilbur thriving next to each other in the Mint family. 

Blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias used to think plants were boring. Then, in college, he got a summer job in habitat restoration at an old quarry, and he fell in love.

He learned about the strange ways plants have sex, how they conquer new territories, and what animals they prefer to eat. Most of all, they fight for survival. It’s not exactly war, but there is never enough water, nutrients, space, and light, and there are always predators. Plants meet their challenges in surprising, wonderful ways.

So go outside, he says, and get to know your local plants like you know your friends.

I’m the daughter of two scientists, and this book was deeply important to me when I first read it. It helped me understand my parents’ passion for and pursuit of botanical knowledge. Many of the characters in this collection (a novella and stories) are fictional botanists, but historical figures appear in several stories. For instance, “The English Pupil” features an elderly Carl Linnaeus and explores themes of botany and regret.